Content area
Full text
A Theatre of Envy was published by Oxford University Press in 1991, though some of its material appeared up to twenty years earlier. This article seeks to present a tribute to Girard's sustained engagement with the drama of William Shakespeare.
Violence is the heart and secret soul of the sacred'; these words are probably the most succinct expression of Professor Rene Girard's discovery, his announcement of a deep complicity between human violence, culture and religion. His intellectual and spiritual journey, vividly described by one critic as a `voyage to the end of the sciences of man', engages with anthropology and the psychological sciences, but it begins with the classics of western literature and ends with an astonishing return to our Judaeo-Christian origins and a new appreciation of the importance and truth of the biblical revelation. Only the very greatest of literature comes close to the power of the gospels in uncovering the basic facts of our human condition as these are underlined by Girard: the radically interdividual 'mimetic' nature of human desire, the potential for violence that this imitated desire entails, and the universal and depressing tendency of human beings to discharge this violence on marginal figures or groups whom we know as 'scapegoats'. All cultural phenomena, and especially religious institutions, either emerge from the primitive fear of unchecked violence, or are attempts to stem the tide by limited, 'sacrificial' doses of that violence.
The rootedness of classical Greek theatre in religious cult is generally accepted, and Girard's readings of Greek tragedies are extremely important in his cultural anthropology. It is his book on Shakespeare, however, which represents the fullest and most satisfying exposition of the mimetic theory in a dramatic context.
Our 'contemporary'
To rephrase, then, the formulation with which we began, `violence is the heart and secret soul of Shakespeare'. This affirmation sits uneasily, to be sure, with our rose-tinted, romanticised Swan of Avon, as reassuringly English as warm beer, as internationally renowned as McDonalds, and such a valuable contributor to our invisible earnings. English Shakespeare is heavy laden with linguistic, political and educational baggage; it is often the case that nonEnglish critics are in a better position to read and appreciate him than his compatriots.
Here, a comparison with the impact...